math

I am amazed by the number of pundits that seem to believe only Clinton supporters can add numbers. Today’s New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, illustrates this in his piece entitled ‘Feel The Math’. Since his ideas repeat a very common argument, it is important to call out the problems with Krugman’s math lessons.

First, even though Krugman criticizes the horserace mentality of the media, his argument is stuck in that horserace mentality. He is such a fish in water than he doesn’t get it. His argument is that Clinton is the odds on favorite, with Sanders facing impossible odds, so get with the program, give up on Sanders, and support Clinton. He makes the odds of the race the principle reason for supporting the Clinton campaign.

The flip side of this first point, is that Krugman and others fail to understand the degree that so many of those who support Senator Sanders, as I do, believe that he has big ideas that merit support. We are registering our support for him and his ideas. Bernie’s tag line of ‘A Future We Can Believe In’ resonates with his supporters. Sanders has run a campaign on policy, and his vision of the directions we need to move on such issues as campaign finance reform, ridiculous inequities in income distribution, treating a college more like we have been treating a high school education for decades, and more. Support for Sanders is a vote in favor of his vision, his big ideas, tied into a coherent framework, versus small ideas only linked by pragmatic incrementalism.

Secondly, Krugman and others must know that calling an election before it is over has a major impact on late voting. Television networks cannot call an election until the polls close, but this is essentially what is happening in calling an election during a rolling set of primaries. It is one thing for a candidate to decide to postpone or stop their campaign, but for the media to get behind the Democratic Party establishment and the Clinton campaign to convince Bernie Sanders to stop his campaign, or for his supporters to abandon him, is a huge mistake. In the longterm, it will rebound on trust in the media and the party, but in the short-term, it will undermine the votes for that candidate downstream. What is truly remarkable is the degree that much of Senator Sanders’ support that held up to this onslaught by the supporters of the other side, who think they are the only one’s who can do arithmetic.

Finally, it might be worth noting that Bernie Sanders is not Hillary Clinton. And Hillary Clinton is no Barack Obama. 2016 is not 2008. The math argument always makes these analogies, saying we’ve been here before. This is a repetition of 2008. Not true. These are very different candidates, different bases of support, with very different baggage, and in a very different context. Not surprisingly, the mathematicians are poor historians.

If Hillary’s election is so inevitable – if she has the math race locked up, then what is the panic? Why the urgency in trying to sway late voters to support Hillary by making an argument based on math rather than policy and platforms. Let the primary voters in California vote on the basis of the candidates ideas, not on the odds of the horserace.